


Don't worry cause I'm only dying

by ElisAttack



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, In The Flesh AU, M/M, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-25
Updated: 2017-03-25
Packaged: 2018-10-10 09:43:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10434939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElisAttack/pseuds/ElisAttack
Summary: Derek can’t hear Stiles heartbeat anymore.  He can’t feel the thudding flow of blood through his veins when he touches him.  He can’t smell anything but the medication Derek has to inject into his spinal column every single morning because no one else wants to do it.Derek can see the flash of a staple holding together a cut that will never heal, courtesy of Derek trying to save the unsavable.  The white in his irises seem to glow, Derek is the only one he’s comfortable not wearing his contacts around.  The blue of his veins, stand in prominence.  The gauntness of his cheeks, breaks his face into angles.  His voice is hoarse, mouth dry.Derek loves him more than anything.Or the one where Stiles rises on a Tuesday.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting in my drafts for forever. I've been having trouble writing both fic, and in general, and I'm trying to get back into it, so I touched this up, and here it is.
> 
> (Title from Moriarty's Cottonflower cause I've been listening to Gee Whiz but This Is a Lonesome Town on repeat for the last few days and can't get it out of my head.)

Stiles rises on a Tuesday.  

It’s a sunny day, lovely, actually.  The temperature just right, the breeze gentle and caressing as it blows the strays hairs off his sweaty forehead.  The sputtering of a nearby sprinkler and the barking of a dog makes the day seem even more normal.  It isn’t the sort of day Derek would have expected of a zombie rising, but then again, his family also burned on a cloudless day.

Stiles looks almost exactly the same as before he died, his hair is still soft as butter, fingers still long and strong.  He’s paler though, and his eyes aren’t whiskey anymore.  He growls at Derek like he doesn’t recognize him.

“Don’t worry, bub,”  The militant says, trying to sound reassuring, but coming across tired and overworked.  

Derek’s neighbour called him when she spotted Stiles wandering around on Derek’s lawn, draping the noose of a catch pole around Stiles’ long neck.  It’s a tool used on feral dogs, and if Stiles was in his right mind, he would have told an inappropriate dog joke, nudging Derek in the stomach with too sharp elbows.  Derek would’ve rolled his eyes, but the joke would still be hilarious.  He just wouldn’t have let Stiles see him laugh.  Derek enjoys the illusion of stoicism.  

“We’ll get him fixed right up for you,”  The militant huffs when Stiles’ ragged elbow catches him in the gut.

He hauls Stiles over, spitting and growling, to his truck.  Stiles’ fingers are curled like claws, cloudy eyes fixed on Derek, as he’s loaded in the back, poked with sticks like he’s not even human.  Derek watches helplessly as they drive him away.

The cemetery they buried Stiles in is a twenty minute drive right across town.  Yet, Stiles found his way to Derek’s house.  To the house he picked out for Derek two years ago when he had rushed into the loft, shoving the listing right in his face.  

Stiles had said that the burbs would mellow him out.  What he meant was that he knew Derek wanted to settle down, sooner rather than later.  After, Stiles had smiled, and mentioned something about Derek chasing down the local paperboy while in full shift.  A dog joke, as typical.  Derek had growled, but the moment Stiles left, he called the realtor.

Stiles came back to this house, and that alone gives Derek hope.

***

Stiles dies at the age of eighteen, a month before his first semester at Berkeley.  

“Subarachnoid hemorrhage,” the doctor says with a shake of his head, “Nothing could have been done.”  

Stiles died in his sleep, and nothing could have been done.  

Derek sits in the waiting room chair, listening in on the conversation between the doctor and Sheriff.  Derek was the one who found him.  He had climbed into Stiles’ dark bedroom, intent on collecting a pile of research he was doing.  He hadn’t heard Stiles’ heartbeat, and thought he was working overtime at Lydia’s, their heads buried in old musty books, forgetting to sleep.  

When Derek saw his prone body lying on the bed—skin pale, breath deathly silent—he put his claws straight through his palms.  Derek’s blood is smeared on Stiles’ chest where Derek tried to beat his heart into restarting.  On Stiles’ pale cheeks where Derek had grabbing him and begged him to open his eyes.  On his neck where Derek had bit, hoping there was still enough of life left for the change to take hold.

There wasn’t.

“But he’s so young,”  The Sheriff pleads, his voice cracking horribly.  Derek can smell the tears streaming down his cheeks, taste the desperation and disbelief, even through the antiseptic and cold metallic smell of the hospital.  “It couldn’t have just happened.”

The doctor’s heart is steady though all of it, his voice calm and collected, and Derek _hates_ him for it.  Stiles is dead, and he doesn’t care.  Derek feels like he’s crumbling to pieces on the inside.  

He thinks of the keys to a brand new Jeep he has sitting in his desk.  Stiles’ Jeep had died a fateful death senior year, and Derek had gone out and bought a new one for him a few days after.  He had slowly been working up the courage to give it to Stiles, but never managed to actually do it.  

The doctor sighs, shifting awkwardly on his feet, trainers squeaking on the polished hospital floors.  “Did he fall within in the past week?  Any sort of head trauma, no matter how small, might have caused this.”

Derek’s heart thuds in his chest, beating like a metronome.  He doesn’t know how the nurse walking by doesn’t hear it.  It’s deafening.

A few days ago Stiles had tripped on his feet, falling against Derek’s porch railing.  He had hit his head, but walked away, seemingly unharmed, cracking jokes and laughing like usual.  Derek had smiled, and run his hand through soft, brown hair, so relieved he hadn’t been hurt.  So used to the many quirks that makes Stiles, _Stiles_.

But now he lies cold at the morgue, dead, and Derek will never hear him laugh again.

***

They give Stiles makeup that’s a shade too dark.  A tad too yellow than his original skin tone.  They only gave him one colour, so when he wears it, he looks wrong—too perfect, like he’s a graffitied statue that’s been ‘fixed’ with paint.  The contacts the government demands he wear—or risk getting shot by a concerned citizen—looks nothing like the whiskey browns that were once so compelling.  They’re too flat.  Too cold of a brown, just like the makeup.

When Stiles meets his gaze in the mirror—his eyes not quite right, a makeup brush in Lydia’s hand as she teaches him how to contour—Derek finds that he doesn’t mind one bit.  

Stiles’ smile is still the same.  

He grins crookedly, and it makes Derek’s heart thump in his chest, like it always has.  There’s something about the kinds of smiles Stiles affords Derek when he knows it’s only him looking.  Like he alone knows a secret, but he wants nothing more than to tell Derek what it is.  

A errant tear trails from the corner of Derek’s eye.    

Stiles’ smile dips then, faltering, when he sees it, like he can’t believe that anyone would ever cry for him.  

Derek wonders how someone, anyone, couldn’t cry for him.  Over him.

Derek recalls Stiles’ funeral.  How Derek had stood silent and tall, off to the side in a pressed black suit as the sheriff broke down sobbing over the coffin, over his wife’s closed grave, right beside his son’s open one.  

Derek recalls after Stiles’ funeral.  How Derek had crawled into his bed, still in his suit, and cried so desperately, so heartbroken over everything he has lost, and everything he’s never had.  Derek soaked the pillow through and through, his lip split from dehydration.  Red, red blood, devastation and tears.

But then Lydia sweeps her makeup brush under his nose, and Stiles sneezes, breaking the moment.

***

“I can’t feel pain anymore, I can’t feel anything anymore,”  Stiles says as they sit on Derek’s back porch.  He has a beer in hand, while Stiles clasps nothing but his own eerily still fingers.  “I feel empty.”

Derek sips his beer, bobbing his head as he looks off into the distance.  The sun lies on the horizon, kissing the tops of the trees in an orange glow.  It hurts when he stares too long.  Dots appear in his vision, then disappear, then reappear, over and over again.  Derek knows it’s his retinas burning and healing in an endless cycle.  He can’t look away.

“I can’t love anymore.”

Derek looks away.  He turns to Stiles then.  He’s outlined in a halo of light, and Derek doesn’t think he’s ever seen anyone more beautiful.  “You’re still you,”  Derek says easily.  He’s never been more sure of anything.

Stiles doesn’t even blink.  “It feels like I have a hole where my soul used to be.  Like what I am right now, it’s not enough.”

“I love you,”  Derek offers,  “Is that enough?”

Stiles tips his head to the side, like he’s seriously considering it.  “I dunno, maybe?”

“Hmm,”  Derek hums.  

Derek can’t hear Stiles heartbeat anymore.  He can’t feel the thudding flow of blood through his veins when he touches him.  He can’t smell anything but the medication Derek has to inject into his spinal column every single morning because no one else wants to do it.  

Derek can see the flash of a staple holding together a cut that will never heal, courtesy of Derek trying to save the unsavable.  The white in his irises seem to glow, Derek is the only one he’s comfortable not wearing his contacts around.  The blue of his veins, stand in prominence.  The gauntness of his cheeks, breaks his face into angles.  His voice is hoarse, mouth dry.

Derek loves him more than anything.

He sips his beer again.

“I remember loving you before I died,”  Stiles admits quietly.

“I know you did.  You thought you were going for subtlety, but it was obvious.”  Derek points out.

Stiles huffs, like he’s displeased with how presumptuous Derek is being.  “Did you love me?  Back then, I mean.”

Derek nods his head.

“Is that why?”  Stiles asks quietly.  

He says he can’t feel, but Derek knows Stiles, and when he goes quiet, guarded, like this, it’s because he’s afraid of getting hurt.  Fear is a feeling as much as love is.  Fear and love go hand in hand.  

“Why I love you still?  Yes and no.”

Stiles bobs his head.  “Okay.  I’m chill with that, surprisingly.”  Stiles grabs him by the front of his shirt and pulls him into a dry, cold kiss.  “The plumbing doesn't work anymore.  Hope that’s cool.”

Derek rolls his eyes.

“I mean I can’t get it up-”

“I know what you mean.”

“Good, just so we’re clear.”  Stiles pauses for a second.  “Think I could have some of that beer?”

“If you want to throw up black tar, be my guest.”  Derek reaches into the cooler and pulls out a new bottle, condensation trailing over his wrist, dripping onto the wood.

“You only live once,”  Stiles says, but doesn’t take the bottle.

Derek rolls his eyes.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I love this fandom so much ~ugly sobbing~


End file.
